Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities. Unlike electronic dance music, which is sub-genre in the category, all examples of electronica are not necessarily made for dancing."Electronica is a broad term used to describe the emergence of electronic music that is geared for listening instead of strictly for dancing." The Techno Primer: The Essential Reference for Loop-Based Music Styles, By Tony Verderosa, page 28, Hal Leonard Music/Songbooks ,2002, ISBN 0634017888 Genres such as techno, drum and bass, downtempo, and ambient are among those encompassed by the umbrella term, entering the American mainstream from "alternative" or "underground" venues during the late 1990s. "The glitch genre arrived on the back of the electronica movement, an umbrella term for alternative, largely dance-based electronic music (including house, techno, electro, drum'n'bass, ambient) that has come into vogue in the past five years. Most of the work in this area is released on labels peripherally associated with the dance music market, and is therefore removed from the contexts of academic consideration and acceptability that it might otherwise earn. Still, in spite of this odd pairing of fashion and art music, the composers of glitch often draw their inspiration from the masters of 20th century music who they feel best describe its lineage." THE AESTHETICS OF FAILURE: 'Post-Digital' Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music, Kim Cascone, Computer Music Journal 24:4 Winter 2002 (MIT Press) Allmusic categorises electronica as a top-level genre on their main page, where they state that electronica includes danceable grooves to music for headphones and chillout areas."'Reaching back to grab the grooves of '70s disco/funk and the gadgets of electronic composition, Electronica soon became a whole new entity in and of itself, spinning off new sounds and subgenres with no end in sight two decades down the pike. Its beginnings came in the post-disco environment of Chicago/New York and Detroit, the cities who spawned house and techno (respectively) during the 1980s. Later in that decade, club-goers in Britain latched onto the fusion of mechanical and sensual, and returned the favor to hungry Americans with new styles like jungle/drum'n'bass and trip-hop. Though most all early electronica was danceable, by the beginning of the '90s, producers were also making music for the headphones and chill-out areas as well, resulting in dozens of stylistic fusions like ambient-house, experimental techno, tech-house, electro-techno, etc. Typical for the many styles gathered under the umbrella was a focus on danceable grooves, very loose song structure (if any), and, in many producers, a relentless desire to find a new sound no matter how tepid the results." Electronica has grown to influence mainstream crossover recordings. Electronic sounds began to form the basis of a wide array of popular music in the late 1970s, and became key to the mainstream pop and rock sounds of the 1980s. Since the adoption of "electronica" in the 1990s to describe more underground music with an electronic aesthetic, elements of modern electronica have been adopted by many popular artists in mainstream music. Electronic Dance Music Culture, a contemporary subculture centered on raves, is a global phenomenon that has been attracting the interest of scholars across the globe. Originating from "Acid house|Acid House" parties in Ibiza, Spain, and "Psychedelic Trance" dance parties in Goa, India (Goa trance), raves became the most dynamic digital counterculture of the 1990s. First in Europe and Goa, then in the US, and then all over the world, raves have become associated with peace-and-love idealism, community, an embrace of technology, and psychedelic consciousness, though they have been criticized for their acceptance of drug usage and sexual practices that are of questionable safety. Notes and references Category:Genres